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glass

glass is a book of poetry that slides between and beyond two events: the death of a close friend of mine in an accident in Mismaloya, Mexico, and the mysterious illness that came over me the year after, which left me unable to walk well for much of that year.

The book roams freely over a territory of memories from before and after my friend’s death, and before and during my illness.

Back cover/blurbs:

When I read Rose Hunter’s poetry I am immersed in the flow of her music, as if the conscious world is an intensely coloured envelope of experience: wonder mixed with something dark and unpredictable. Anyone who can say “a cantaloupe is the fruit equivalent of a lobster” has my full attention.
—Angela Gardner, Editor, foam:e

Rose Hunter’s poems decentre the speaking subject, shifting position from the absurd to the oneiric, from the colourful streets of Mexico to Brisbane. Part-diary, part-confession, glass is a delicate and resilient collection, a hybrid language answering poetry’s questions of memory and desire.
—Michelle Cahill, Editor, Mascara Literary Review

Review:

“That Hunter has spent many years overseas is immediately obvious from the subject matter of many of the poems and the well-placed use of Spanish language words and phrases inside the English-language text (Hunter has lived in Canada and now in Mexico). This multilingual aspect of her poetry, in the words of Jennifer K. Dick . . . is frequently used “to shred the unicultural, monolingual nature of a poem” and “can reveal a new awareness of each of our inherent language’s limits and limitlessness at once.” Edward Hirsch suggests that the “fusion of languages speaks to complex modern identities.”

. . .

The poems are noticeable for their use of caesura, their enjambment (even across sections of a poem on different pages), description that is vivid, use of non-English phrases, lack of capital letters and sentences that are left hanging . . . This isn’t the only use of punctuation to further the feeling that we are in a constant unstable present:

he handed me a coat fit for a swan, i took it
then mistook it for a sort of suffocation or strangulation
? device.
[bellas artes p.19]

These are highly polished and controlled poems wielded with great skill and a consequent audacity that comes from getting it right.”
—Angela Gardner, read the full review at foam:e

Cover info:

The cover was created from a photo I took of the main church in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My friend Dorothee Lang worked her magic to create this multifaceted image.